Introduction to Requirements Management

Requirements management is the process of collecting, analyzing, refining, and prioritizing product requirements and then planning for their delivery. The purpose of requirements management is to ensure that the organization validates and meets the needs of its customers and external and internal stakeholders.

Requirements management involves communication between the project team members and stakeholders, and adjustment to requirements changes throughout the course of the project. To prevent one class of requirements from overriding another, constant communication among members of the development team is critical.

Requirements management does not end with product release. From that point on, the data coming in about the application’s acceptability is gathered and fed into the Investigation phase of the next generation or release. Thus the process begins again.

What is requirements management?

A requirement is a defined capability to which the results of certain work (in this case software development) should meet. It is a continuous process throughout the lifecycle of a product and requirements can be generated by many stakeholders including: customers, partners, sales, support, management, engineering, operations, and of course product management. When requirements are being properly curated and managed there is clear and consistent communication between the product team and engineering members and any needed changes are broadly shared with all stakeholders.